Hasta La Creative!

Alternative and Activist New Media provides a rich and accessible overview of the ways in which activists, artists, and citizen groups around the world use new media and information technologies to gain visibility and voice, present alternative or marginal views, share their own DIY information systems and content, and otherwise resist, talk back to, or confront dominant media culture. Today, a lively and contentious cycle of capture, cooptation, and subversion of information, content, and system design marks the relationship between the mainstream ‘center’ and the interactive, participatory ‘edges’ of media culture continue

Over the past twenty years, an abundance of art forms have emerged that use aesthetics to affect social dynamics. These works are often produced by collectives or come out of a community context; they emphasize participation, dialogue, and action, and appear in situations ranging from theater to activism to urban planning to visual art to health care. Engaged with the texture of living, these art works often blur the line between art and life. This book offers the first global portrait of a complex and exciting mode of cultural production–one that has virtually redefined contemporary art practice continue

Today, the creative scope of existing visual storytelling techniques is being expanded to meet the formidable challenge of extracting valuable news, surprising findings, and relevant stories from a daily flood of data head on. Visual Storytelling focuses on contemporary and experimental manifestations of visual forms that can be classified as such continue

he book is thus putting the spotlight on ‘Socially and Politically Engaged Design’. Design! With a bit of architecture thrown in. If you’re into activist, socially engaged art, you might find that many of the projects presented in this book are very reasonable and appropriate. They have less bite than the work of, say, Santiago Sierra (more about him tomorrow) but that shouldn’t be held against them. Because these designers are smart. And levelheaded enough to look for practical, witty solutions to very circumscribed issues. There’s no ‘Design will save the world!’ here continue

What roles can art and activism play in a post-Fordist society of the spectacle? Can activist art effect real change? Art & Activism in the Age of Globalization asks these and other pressing questions facing contemporary activist art, through case studies by established artists and filmmakers as well as emerging voices. It investigates issues of urban activism and the activism of anonymous networks, giving special consideration to the effects of the War on Terror upon the activist agenda continue

The projects presented in the book explore how current challenges for architecture, mobility, and energy as well as the logistics of food consumption and waste removal can be met. Text features by both architects and theorists give added insight continue

Mapping the Invisible: EU-Roma Gypsies takes the reader on a visual journey across Europe with a focus on its fastest-growing ethnic minority: the Roma. This publication is the result of a unique partnership called EU-ROMA, formed by a group of architects, designers and artists wishing to raise awareness of the diversity and richness of the Roma people continue

This book of interviews tracks the work of curators in the field of new media art in order to consider the massive changes and developments over a relatively short period of time. They are also a celebration of the ten years that the online resource for curators of new media art, CRUMB, has been publishing interviews and other research continue

Change, the buzzword of the last U.S. presidential campaign, is the order of the day, and the task of AGENDA is to explore what kind of change will be needed if architects are to assume a political and social agency in this new landscape. Bringing together diverse forms of content, AGENDA is a product of vigilant observation, introspection, and engagement with outside thinkers and collaborators – artists, curators, politicians, authors, economists, journalists, developers, educators, and architects continue

Users’ endeavors, like glittering star backgrounds, photos of cute kittens and rainbow gradients, are mostly derided as kitsch or in the most extreme cases, postulated as the end of culture itself. In fact this evolving vernacular, created by users for users, is the most important, beautiful and misunderstood language of new media continue